A strong social media presence is based on being active and publishing relevant content. However, it is a challenge to keep posting content on a regular basis. If you have a lot of content that's ready to be published, but you're unavailable to publish it regularly or during a holiday season or even just a break, you can use the Bulk Scheduler feature on Zoho Social. With this, you can schedule up to 350 posts at a time* across all your social channels. All you have to do is upload a .CSV, .XLS, or .XLSX file with the dates, times, and your content.
To schedule posts using Bulk Scheduler:
1) Go to the Posts tab and find the Bulk Scheduler option under the New Post button.
2) There is no limit to number of posts you can bulk-schedule, by adding multiple spreadsheets. But at any given point though, your Brand will only schedule the first 350 posts on the spreadsheet.
3) In the pop-up window, click Browse file... and select the spreadsheet you want to upload. Make sure that the file you upload is in line with the formatting rules specified on the right side of your screen. If you're unsure how it works, you can also download a sample .CSV or .XLSX file and edit it accordingly and Click Schedule.
If the spreadsheet you've uploaded is not in the correct format, you will see an error message.
Click the hyperlink on “why" to see the file. Once you open the file, you'll see an additional column briefly describing why your posts couldn't be scheduled.
Once you fix the spreadsheet, upload it again and all your posts will be scheduled.
A few points to note when you're using the Bulk Scheduler:
- You cannot upload images directly from your system while using Bulk Scheduler. It's necessary you save these images as public URLs. Learn how to convert images into public URLs.
The .csv or .xls or .xlsx file you upload should include the following information as separate columns:
DATE, CONTENT, LINK URL, IMAGE URL1, IMAGE URL2, IMAGE URL3, IMAGE URL4, BUTTON and BUTTON URL.
- The LINK URL is optional for all channels.
- The IMAGE URL is optional for all channels except Instagram. If you plan to bulk schedule posts to your Instagram channel, make sure there is at least one IMAGE URL to go along with your post.
- You can optionally add a button to your Google My Business posts. To do this, create two more columns after your image URL columns for the BUTTON and the BUTTON URL. You may type any of the following buttons to go along with your Google My Business posts: Learn more, Sign up, Order online, Book and Buy.
- Date and time of your posts should be specified in this format: MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM. Eg: For July 5, 2016, 1:45 pm; it'll be 07/05/2016 13:45. Check out our sample files.
- Each post can include a maximum of 750 characters. (For Twitter it's 280, LinkedIn it's 700 and Google My Business it's 1500)
- Please keep in mind that at any point a Brand can have a maximum of 350 posts scheduled from the Bulk Scheduler.
Example 1: If you have scheduled 20 posts to your Twitter account and 30 to your Facebook Page, you'll be able to schedule 300 more from the Bulk Scheduler.
Example 2: If you have scheduled 20 posts to all your channels from the Bulk Scheduler in one go, you'll be able to schedule 330 more from the Bulk Scheduler. However, there is no limit to the number of posts you can schedule manually in Zoho Social.
- Your posts will be scheduled as per the Brand's timezone.
- The schedule time for the posts should be set for at least ten minutes ahead of the upload time.
- Make sure you don't have duplicate posts. That is, no two dates should have the same content or link scheduled.
- Make sure a post scheduled for a date does not have duplicate images. That is, each of the 4 image urls you add to a single post must be unique.
- LinkedIn and Google My Business do not support multiple images.
- Twitter only allows 1 gif image or 4 images of the following formats: png, jpg and jpeg.